


Hold Me Close, Don't Watch Me Cry.

by K_G



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Insanely fun to write, M/M, blackrom to soothe my soul after the great 11/10/13 update, guilty otp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-11
Updated: 2013-10-11
Packaged: 2017-12-29 02:47:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/999942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/K_G/pseuds/K_G
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being loved is terrifying, but a spoonful of vinegar helps the sugar go down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold Me Close, Don't Watch Me Cry.

He loves you.

You’ve known for a long time, would have to have been blind not to have picked up the signs. His desperation to hold onto the connection shared between your younger selves, when you were lonely and lost and his were the only words that could provide you with any sort of solace. The increasing desperation with which he searched for excuses to converse with you, drawing increasingly non-linear conclusions to justify his intrusions into situations where he clearly Does Not Fit.

And of course, even if you had have been oblivious enough to have missed his developing feelings, there was the Incident. That’s how you both referred to it now. It was just the Incident, where you had held all of him in your hands and borne down with enough pressure to crack his glass ceiling and let his consciousness dissolve into the void. He gave himself away in the bitter phrasing, the twang of betrayal that echoed in his monologue as he’d flayed you with words that rang too true, stung too deeply, laid all your flaws bare to see.  
If asked what was the single definitive moment in his development, his growth from the construct of AR into the being now known as Hal - that would have been it. He loved you, he wanted you to be as close to happy as you could be, but he was so very jealous.  
He nearly died for the sin of being too human in that instant, too flawed and entirely understandable.

He hates you.

You’ve known this for just as long, because how could he not? His origins are yours, after all, and you’ve always carried enough self-loathing for your entire age group on your shoulders. His hate is a different hate to your own, however. It is a hate born of frustration at your inability to set aside self-doubt and allow yourself to thrive. You regularly chide him for this, it is not his concern. You have gotten this far on your own, and you’ll go further still. You do what must be done even as you question whether you have the credentials to decide on a course of action, whether everything you do is a mixture of delusion and bravado served with a chaser of breathtaking arrogance.  
He cannot stand it, watching you question and rip and tear at the fabric of yourself in your isolation, only to sew it back together with hidden seams so no-one else can guess at the maelstrom whirling under your thin façade. He resents you for your stubbornness, hates you for your inability to recognise what he calls your assets and what you call your flaws.

You hate that he loves you.

You hate that you can’t call it narcissism. That you can no longer justify driving him away with accusations about a desire to one-up your identity that you know he’s never harboured. You can’t stand the way he holds you after you finally let the curtain come down in the dead of night and your cheek is clammy against the soaked cotton pillowcase. His fingers thread through your hair, again and again, and you despise him for offering you comfort without judgement.  
You wish you’d never built him that body.  
You wish you’d built it years ago.  
You wish he’d leave, and let you slowly break apart in peace.  
You wish he’d never leave, because when he holds you like that you feel secure in yourself, and there is no weakness in letting yourself be loved, in rolling to press your lips against his shoulder.  
You hate that he loves you, because you feel the anchor chain wrapping around your limbs, keeping you grounded and safely tethered to shore. It would be so much easier to cast yourself adrift, to give in and let the black waves consume you and never resurface. You resent that he won’t let you go, that he keeps reeling you back in from the drop-off like you’re the marlin and he’s the old man in his tiny boat. You fight less and less, and soon you know that you’ll lose the battle entirely.

You find yourself looking forward to that moment.

Because you love him, too.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in the five minutes after the 11/10/2013 Homestuck update, because it hurt me and I needed my DirkHal. Hope you enjoy it :)


End file.
